The present invention relates to the field of electronic devices having a display. It also relates to electronic devices and keyboard-less electronic devices in a portable environment with a minimized use of a key-based entry. More specifically, the invention relates to a simple method to provide a user with a user interface (UI), wherein a conventional touch interaction based user interface is further developed and modified for a simpler input of characters and a faster scrolling or pre-selection of lists. The invention further relates to an electronic device offering a keyboard-less user interface as an alternative to keypad and display combinations. The present invention also relates to a user interface design for e.g. pen interaction with a touch screen device.
An electronic device typically includes applications where searching of a particular piece of information is required. “Contacts” is an example of such an application. In devices having a keypad, the search function can be implemented as a search bar, where the user can input letters to modify the search. Such a concept is not very useful in devices that do not have a keypad but only alternative input such as e.g. a touch screen.
The state of the art encompasses some electronic touch screen devices that are configured to show a special alpha toolbar adjacent below or at a side of the list in a list-based application. The toolbar can display characters in groups (ABC, DEF, GHI . . . ) and tapping of a group scrolls the contact list accordingly. Following to the selection of a group the list hops to the entry beginning with the first character of the group. Alternatively all characters of said group can be displayed in a sub-menu for selection. Another alternative solution provided by the state of the art is based on the T9 logic. The problem of this solution is that it takes much space in the user interface and it can only be used in situations where searching is very efficient—like the contacts application.
An efficient search in general lists is much more complicated in keyboard-less devices, since screen-based text input components take up space on the screen and text entry through them is slow.
All the above approaches for screen-based text input components have in common that they permanently require space in the user interface i.e. the touch screen, or adjacent to the screen e.g. in a pressure sensitive touch pad. Therefore, a screen-based text user-input component is needed to overcome these problems.